"A [preacher] who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they are necessarily reflected in his [preaching]." — BXVI

13 December 2015

I say again: Rejoice!

3rd Sunday of Advent

Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP

Lay Carmelites/OLR, NOLA

“Rejoice
in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” Given the state
of the world, it might seem irresponsible to spend our time rejoicing
in the Lord. Shouldn't we be trying to solve the problems our sins
have created? Shouldn't we be worried about poverty, terrorism,
environmental destruction, and the collapse of our nation's moral
conscience? These are the Big Issues, the Big Problems that need our
attention. After all, the Lord can do w/o our rejoicing. True. The
Lord is perfectly who he is and will always be w/o our rejoicing. He
can do w/o it. But can we? Can we survive and thrive as fallen men
and women if we fail to rejoice in the Lord? No, we can't. We rejoice
in the Lord for the same reason that we pray, offer sacrifice and
worship; for the same reason we give alms, spend our time and talent
helping the Church. All of these – most especially rejoicing –
prepare us to better receive the graces that God has already given us
in abundance. To rejoice, that is, to immerse yourself in the joy
that only Christ can give is to bring yourself into the presence of
the one who is Joy Himself. As an effect of divine love, divine joy
is
Christ – unfiltered, undiluted.

The
third Sunday of Advent is marked out for us as a day for rejoicing.
Even as we wait for the coming of the Christ Child and the Lord
coming again, we set aside one Sunday in the season to give ourselves
over to the joy that only Christ can bring to perfection. The worries
of the world are same worries that plagued our grandparents, their
grandparents, and theirs. The worries of this world are the worries
of a world ruled by the princes and principalities who willfully
rejected the offer of divine love offered to them at their creation.
These powers are incapable of love, immune to mercy, and utterly w/o
hope. Why should the world they rule be any different? Their
anxieties rub off on us b/c we live in their world. But we are not of
their world. We belong to Christ and to him alone. It is in this
knowledge and with supreme faith and living in hope that we can we
say, “Rejoice in the Lord always. . .Rejoice!” Today is made holy
for our rejoicing, set apart as a time and place for us to immerse
ourselves fully in the presence of Christ who announced his Father's
kingdom, who is building his kingdom even now, and who will come
again to finish what he started. While we wait, we also rejoice.

And
our saint for waiting and rejoicing is John the Baptist! He goes
before the Lord announcing his arrival, baptizing for the repentance
of sin, and anticipating the one who will baptize with the fire of
the Holy Spirit. John rejoiced in his mother's womb at the arrival of
Mary and the yet-to-be born Jesus. He spends his life in the desert,
waiting for the time to go back into the world and herald the
Savior's coming. Today we take just one day to bask in Christ's joy
before we go back into the world and herald the Savior's arrival.
Because we have a job to do – a holy job – we do not have the
time or the energy or the patience to endure the worries of the
world. The world created its worries; let the world deal with them.
Our task is to be Christs in the world while never being of the
world. Our task is to defeat sin and death with the mercy and love
that Christ freely, abundantly gives. Our task is to go out, wherever
it is that we belong and thrive, to go and herald the arrival of
Christ, announcing to all who will hear, “Rejoice in the Lord
always. I shall say it again: rejoice!”